Blind Signing and Transaction Manifests

Overview

Blind signing is the practice of signing transactions whose effects you cannot verify. On Ethereum, users routinely approve transactions that are opaque hexadecimal data — they cannot see what the transaction will actually do until after it executes.

The Cost

Blind signing has enabled over $100 million in losses through approval exploits, phishing, and malicious contract interactions. Users unknowingly grant unlimited token approvals that are later drained.

How Radix Solves This

Radix transaction manifests are deterministic, human-readable descriptions of exactly what a transaction will do. The Radix Wallet parses these manifests and shows users exactly which assets will move, where they'll go, and what they'll receive — before signing.

This is equally important for AI agents — autonomous agents can read and verify manifests programmatically, never blind-signing a transaction they don't understand.